Technology Reseller - v16

01732 759725 30 CLOUD according to Product Strategy Director Jonathan Connor, the potential for further growth is enormous. “When we talk to vendors like Microsoft and Symantec, they tell us that the big untapped opportunity with cloud is in the micro SMB and SME segment. They have done very well in the enterprise and mid-market space, but at the smaller end of the market, where we specialise, penetration is an awful lot lower,” he said. “In my last conversation with Microsoft, they were talking about the enterprise and mid-market space being 70-80% cloud adopted, whereas amongst smaller businesses penetration is around 8-9% or, at best, 11-12%. So, there is a lot of opportunity where we are.” Connor adds that, being focused on the micro SMB and SME segments, Giacom’s strategy is to make everything very straightforward and very simple for resellers/MSPs and their customers. “We call our business proposition Easy on, Easy off. Resellers can take a product for as long as they want, there’s monthly billing and when their customer no longer needs it, they can just cancel it,” he said. Azure Accelerate This approach has worked very well with Office 365 and now Giacom is hoping it will prove equally effective with Azure. In July 2018, it launched the Azure Accelerate programme to demystify the platform and encourage its uptake by resellers. As part of the initiative, Giacom has held Azure events in London and Manchester; set up a dedicated focus team with Azure marketing, sales and technical expertise; and produced educational material tailored to smaller businesses, including case studies and white papers. Early in 2019, it plans to bring out an Azure Handbook and dedicated Azure Information Hub. In the five months since launching Azure Accelerate, Giacom has seen a 73% uptake in Azure services by resellers, and this, says Connor, is just the start. “We have already seen our Azure business grow very healthily. It is what I would call classic Azure – pay-as-you-go and consumption-based, relying on our resellers to have the capability to construct solutions and services in Azure and use the pricing calculator and run through all the bits and pieces you can bolt together to build a customised solution,” he said. “Beyond that, we have grand plans for how we can make Azure accessible to the vast majority of our resellers, who, because they are smaller, don’t have the time, resources or expertise to be a cloud consultant. However, they absolutely have the ability to sell standard IT solutions, whether they are in the cloud or not, and we are doing exciting things here to bring what we call a productised approach to all of our resellers.” Cloud productisation This approach takes complexity and guesswork out of Azure by providing cloud-based services as pre-configured packages for a fixed monthly price. Normally, if a reseller was to offer, say, Small Business Server as a cloud-based server, they would have to decide which components to buy, how many sockets, how many cores, how many SSDs etcetera, and use the Azure calculator to work out how much it all costs and how much to charge the customer. With a Giacom pre- configured package, the reseller can just go onto the Giacom Cloud Market and select the solution and the size they want (small, medium or large). “The first productised solution we are launching, in January, will be a network attached drive. It will look just like an existing drive, except that it is going to be cloud-based. It will be very secure, permissions-based and will provide exactly the functionality you would expect; you can upload, you can download, you can copy Giacom is the UK’s largest reseller- only cloud distributor, focusing on solutions for micro businesses and SMEs and partnering with some of the world’s leading SaaS vendors, including Microsoft, Acronis, Bitdefender, Symantec and SkyKick. Its portal, Giacom Cloud Market, is accessed by more than 5,000 resellers and in 2018 it recorded annual revenues of more than £25 million after four years of double and triple-digit year-on-year growth. A Microsoft Indirect CSP (Cloud Solution Provider) since 2015, Giacom is one of the largest and fastest growing Office 365 and CSP distributors in Europe. Today, a significant proportion of its business comes from Microsoft and, Out with the old, in with the blue Giacom is making it easier for smaller MSPs and resellers to transition their customers to the cloud by launching a series of pre-packaged Azure solutions optimised for micro businesses and SMEs. James Goulding finds out more from Product Strategy Director Jonathan Connor. Jonathan Connor

RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NDUxNDM=